


Til Only Shadows Comfort Me

by belovedmuerto



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bed-sharing, Bittersweet, Cuddling, Gen, M/M, learning to be together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 08:37:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3202748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He prefers to be called James now, and Steve has a really hard time remembering that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Til Only Shadows Comfort Me

**Author's Note:**

> Well this is literally the longest thing I've written in something like three years. I don't even know where it came from, tbh. There is a possibility of more in this world but I'm going to try to go back to the first series I started for this fandom now, at least for a bit. 
> 
> It was lovingly beta'd by the lovely moonblossom. Thanks, bb. Any remaining mistakes are probably on purpose.

He prefers to be called James now, and Steve has a really hard time remembering that, sometimes, because he’s spent his whole life thinking of him as Bucky, ever since they were tiny, ever since he can remember, Bucky’s always been there, and he’s always been Bucky. He used to gripe that only his mother called him James, when Steve would get really angry with him and call him by his full name. But he tries, because he doesn’t like the expression that comes over James’s face when Steve calls him Bucky. It looks painful, and it makes Steve’s heart constrict, makes it flutter like it used to all the time. 

So he tries to remember, although he still thinks of him as Bucky, and he slips rather more often than he’d like. 

James seems to understand, even if he doesn’t really like it. He doesn’t correct Steve; Steve corrects himself enough for both of them. He just gets that expression, like hearing it causes him pain. 

He refers to Steve only as Steve, occasionally as Rogers or Captain, on those incredibly rare instances when SHIELD wants the Soldier in the field. He never calls him Stevie or punk or any of the other silly endearments they’d used with each other since they were children.

They’re awkward around each other, even though James moved into his apartment in the Tower, after they’d finally released him from SHIELD custody. Several people had suggested he get his own place, but he’d completely ignored them, followed Steve home and hadn’t left. Steve never suggested he go elsewhere, even though Sam told him he should, even though Natasha suggested he should with several pointed looks, even though Tony and Bruce and Clint and pretty much everyone told him maybe it wasn’t such a great idea having one of the deadliest assassins in the world living in the room next to his, and Steve didn’t know many more ways to say “No, he won’t kill me if he hasn’t yet and I can’t live without him anymore even if he won’t let me closer than two feet away.”

Neither of them seems to really know how to breach the distance, with word or gesture. So they go on like that.

And Steve slips and calls him Bucky altogether too often, and they both wince.

It’s easier to excuse when it’s the middle of the night and Steve jerks awake in bed. He’s not sure if it was his own nightmares that had woken him--and they were the same as almost always, ice and cold water and drowning, Bucky falling and everyone he loves dying--or the thump from the next room over, the sound of a body hitting the floor. 

“Bucky?” he calls, towards the next room, and then winces at himself. 

There’s no answer from the other side of the wall.

Steve sits in his bed for a few minutes, rubs his hands over his face. It’s not likely that he’ll get more sleep tonight, so he gets up, pulls on a bathrobe over his t-shirt and boxer briefs, and pads out towards the kitchen. 

Bruce had given him several different types of tea when he’d asked about ways to calm himself down in the middle of the night, along with a well-loved book on meditation and an invitation to join him for his morning yoga anytime. Steve hasn’t admitted his nightmares to anyone else on the team, though he’s certain that they all have them, and he’s certain that most of the others are aware of that (Tony, he’s not sure about. Tony seems willfully unaware sometimes). And Bruce had been understanding, because Bruce is like that.

Steve fills the kettle and sets it on the range, turns on the burner underneath it. He’s grateful that Tony had had a gas range put in in his apartment. He’s seen some of the other stoves on the living quarters levels of the Tower, but he prefers fire. He knows how to cook with fire. He doesn’t know how to cook with a completely flat surface. 

Steve leans against the counter and waits for the kettle to start whistling. Idly, he gets down two mugs, just in case Bucky--James, James, his name is James now--decides to give up on sleeping for the night as well. 

He spares a thought to be thankful that he seems to at least be using the bed to sleep, at least some of the time. At first, Bucky had curled up in the corner of the room, wrapped in a blanket and clutching one of the guns Steve pretends he doesn’t have, on constant watch against threat. So Steve is thankful he’s using the bed now, even if it’s probably too soft, just like Steve’s bed still is. Too soft, too comfortable. Too modern. Too empty without Bucky beside him.

The sound of the kettle whistling must cover the sound of the door opening, because Steve doesn’t hear him approach the kitchen at all. He turns around to pour the hot water over the tea bag in his mug and Bucky is just standing there, three feet away, shoulders slumped and eyes red-rimmed and haunted. But his eyes are almost always red-rimmed and haunted, surrounded by deep, dark shadows. Bucky doesn’t require much in the way of sleep as far as Steve can tell, but he seems to get even less than that.

Steve knows better than to ask if he’s ok, when it’s so very obvious that he isn’t. Even if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t ask, because Bucky wouldn’t tell him anyway. He knows better than to appear to notice anything about Bucky--James, dammit, James--other than his presence.

“Tea?” he offers, instead.

James shrugs his right shoulder; he only ever shrugs with his right shoulder. He rarely actually speaks, and half the time when he does, he has to correct himself and speak again in English. Steve’s picked up some Russian since Bucky moved in (Natasha has been helping with that, actually). After he finishes shrugging, he nods.

“Chamomile ok?”

James shrugs again, and Steve pours hot water over the second tea bag in the second mug. He doesn’t hand the mug to him, just grabs his own and skirts around Bucky to go into the living room and sit on the couch. James will join him or he won’t. Steve won’t push, because it’s only ever backfired, since Bucky came back. Pushing always seems to set him back.

A few minutes later, James sits beside him, closer than normal. Usually he’d take up perch on the other end of the couch entirely. Or on the chair. Or the floor.

Or he’d simply take his tea back to his room.

It must’ve been an especially terrible nightmare, for him.

Steve doesn’t acknowledge his closeness, tries not to think about how that makes his heart constrict, thump painfully in his chest for one, two, three beats before settling back into normality. He just digs the remote out of the cushions, and turns on the ginormous television that Stark had put in his living room.

He misses radio, sometimes more than others. 

But late-night television will do. He finds something mindless and colorful, and they sit in silence side by side, sipping their tea. 

If James slumps a bit, after a while, to where his shoulder is just brushing Steve’s, Steve doesn’t bring it up. If he eventually lets himself slump so their shoulders press a little harder together, he tries not to think about that either, briefly afraid that Bucky will bolt. 

But he doesn’t, he just sips his tea until it’s gone, staring at the television, holding the mug delicately in his metal fingers, and then moves to put his mug on the coffee table. Sparing a glance for Steve, he grabs Steve’s mug and puts it next to his. When he sits back, it feels as though they’re even closer together, Steve’s left side pressed against Bucky’s right.

As he drifts off to sleep, much later, lulled by the television and the way he can feel Bucky breathing next to him, Steve’s head tilts onto Bucky’s shoulder of its own volition. He probably imagines that Bucky leans his own head against Steve’s.

Steve wakes up alone on the couch, but the spot next to him is still warm, and he’s covered in a blanket.

James is nowhere in the apartment, but the coffee in the kitchen is still hot, and Steve takes that as a good sign. A good sign of what, he’s not sure, but a good sign.

He chooses to think that Bucky really had leaned against him in the night like he dreamed.

\----

Things remain the same, for the most part. Sometimes Steve will wake up in the morning and there will be hot coffee in the kitchen, but Bucky--James, dammit--doesn’t allow him any closer than he ever has.

He spends most of his time in Steve’s apartment, in their apartment (except Steve’s pretty sure he’s the only one who thinks of it as ‘theirs’ including the other occupant) except when he’s down in the gym, beating the shit out of the robots Tony had rigged for them all to spar with or running like his life depends on it on the treadmill, doing one armed push-ups ‘til he collapses, pushing himself, always pushing.

Occasionally he leaves the Tower, disappears for hours. Steve doesn’t know where he goes. He doesn’t dare ask.

Steve would say something, but he spends most of his free time punching things until they break too, so. And it wouldn’t do any good, anyway. James still has a standing appointment with the shrink SHIELD had assigned him, but Steve has no idea if it’s doing any good. His own appointments only seem to help him organize his thoughts a little bit at this point, but he’s been seeing his therapist for a lot longer than Bucky has. If he has a real issue he wants to discuss, he’d rather just talk to Sam anyway, and even though Sam always teases him and says he’s not Steve’s doctor, he always listens.

Then he gets the call, from Nat, and he’s suiting up, running out of the Tower, leaving James with what might actually be a bewildered look on his face to go off to Chicago to battle the giant-ass squid that just erupted out of the lake.

Sam had it right when he yelled, “Dude, what even is your life?!” just before Steve jumped out of the Quinjet.

He calls his landline when he wakes up in SHIELD HQ medical, because they won’t let him go for at least 24 hours and he doesn’t want James to worry.

James doesn’t answer the phone, not that Steve was expecting him to pick up, so he rambles at the answering machine--he didn’t even know he had an answering machine.

“Uh, hi Bu--James. Hi. Um, I just wanted to let you know that I’m ok. I don’t know how much you may have heard or whatever, or if you even watch the news, but I’m ok. I’m just--they won’t let me leave medical right now because I broke my leg and maybe um. Maybe a few ribs.”

Steve sighs. “And my collarbone. Ugh, that squid was awful. And it smelled. And I think they gave me some new drug or another because I don’t feel any pain right now and I just don’t want you to worry. I don’t know if you worry, but I worry about you, and I don’t like it, and I don’t want you to worry about--hey! Natasha!”

Steve tugs ineffectually at Natasha’s arm, but she shrugs him off and speaks into the phone. “James, Steve is in traction for multiple fractures of his right leg. He has four broken ribs and two more that are cracked as well as a broken collarbone. Otherwise he is intact, and he will be released probably tomorrow afternoon, once his leg starts to heal and the doctors are satisfied with their observations. Sam and I will stay here with him and keep watch, and yes he has been given painkillers, a new formula that seems to actually work for a while before he metabolizes it, so I apologize for his rambling. Acknowledge receipt, please.”

She adds something in Russian before she hangs up, but Steve is too close to unconsciousness to translate it in his head (he’s been working on his Russian, because Bucky still speaks it so often, and he doesn’t like not knowing what Bucky is saying, even if it is all awful and sad and makes him want to hold Bucky and never let go).

His phone stays in Natasha’s hand, and a moment later there’s the ping of an incoming text. She looks up at him and smiles a little. “James acknowledges receipt of your message. Go to sleep, I’ll keep watch.”

“Ok,” Steve slurs, and slips under.

\----

Natasha had told him in the car that she’d texted ahead, to let James know that they’re bringing Steve home. 

Steve shrugs. He wonders if Bucky had even been aware that Steve was gone for the 72 hours or so he’d been out, between the actual mission and his recovery time. Natasha had given him an eloquent look, because she reads him well.

How she even had his number, Steve doesn’t know. He doesn’t even have James’s number. He’d never felt right asking for it, and James had never offered. 

Sam and Natasha trade quips back and forth from under his arms while the elevator takes them up to his floor. Mostly they’re teasing him for getting beaten to hell by a giant squid--”Seriously dude, a squid?!” Sam keeps saying, shaking his head in disbelief as though this isn’t his life now, too--but they’re also flirting in that weird way they have that Steve still hasn’t figured out. He doesn’t understand modern dating at all, despite his attempts at figuring it out (quietly), and Natasha’s near-constant attempts to set him up (although she’s backed off since Bucky took up residence with him, settling for giving him long, appraising looks that he can’t parse instead).

Really, he could support himself, if they’d just let him use the crutches that SHIELD had given him. They’re strong enough to support his weight, after all, and he knows how to use them, and he can support his own weight, he’s been doing it for years. And he can do this, he can go home to his echoing apartment with the super-assassin and he’ll be fine, he just needs to camp out on the couch for a few days and watch old movies and eat Chinese take out or pizza or something.

But Sam and Natasha had just exchanged a look, and had draped his arms over their shoulders and stood close, their arms around his waist, each holding on to him while they banter around him. They don’t make him feel pitied with their care, somehow, so he doesn’t protest beyond a few pointed remarks that they completely ignore. They don’t make him feel small and pitied and sickly the way he still sometimes feels inside, they just make him feel cared for, so he accepts it. He so rarely feels cared for anymore. 

James is in the kitchen when they shoulder their way into the apartment, Sam laughing at how ridiculous they probably look with Steve draped between them and Natasha is muttering in Russian, her tone such that Steve knows he’s being ribbed, even if he doesn’t understand the words. 

Well, he understands a few of them, but he doesn’t really want Natasha to know that he mostly knows the curses thus far. 

James comes out of the kitchen and looks at the three of them. He blinks twice, rapidly, and then comes down the hallway, grabbing the crutches out of Sam’s free hand, retreating back to the living room with them.

“I guess we’re going to the living room,” Sam says. They help Steve down the hall and into the living room.

It’s probably not obvious, but Steve thinks that Bucky may have gotten the couch ready for him.

They get him settled on the couch and stand back. 

“How you doing, man?” Sam asks James. He always asks, because he’s Sam, and despite his misgivings it appears that James hasn’t killed Steve yet, and that’s mostly good enough for Sam.

He gets a shrug in response. “Alright, I guess.”

“The offer stands, you know,” Sam continues, and Steve looks between them. He has no idea what they’re talking about. 

Bucky nods. 

Natasha says something to him as well, in Russian. Steve doesn’t quite catch it, she speaks too rapidly. Bucky almost smiles at her, and responds in kind, and she nods, satisfied.

Altogether it’s more than he’s said to Steve in probably the last three months. 

They both offer Steve _glad you’re okays_ and _get some rests_ and then they head out, leaving Steve on his couch with Bucky standing over him, looking somewhat lost. After a moment, he jerks into motion, leaving the room. 

Steve leans back into the cushions that Bucky _may_ have arranged to make it a little more comfortable for Steve and drapes his arm over his eyes. He’s tired, suddenly. So tired, and everything aches.

“Here,” he hears after several minutes. Steve opens his eyes and lifts his head. 

“Thanks,” Steve replies, looking at all the stuff Bucky--James--has brought him. His laptop, his tablet, his sketch pad and pencils. All of the remotes for the tv are lined up on the coffee table, and there’s a bottle of water and a bowl of fruit. His crutches are propped up within reach. 

James offers him an awkward half-smile, and leaves. 

Steve wants to call him back, but he doesn’t. 

To his mounting surprise, James returns only another moment later, while Steve is still staring at all the stuff he’d brought for him, holding several take-out menus.

“What do you want to eat?” he asks.

Steve blinks again, and then shrugs. “Dunno, what do you feel like?”

James falls silent for a minute, a little frown between his eyes that’s achingly familiar to Steve, contemplating the menus in his hands. 

“Pizza might be good?” he says, eventually, as though he’s not sure he actually believes it.

“Sounds good to me. Would you mind if I ask the others to come up for a while?”

He contemplates that as well. “No.” He sounds more sure this time.

Steve smiles. “Good. That’s good.” He turns his head towards the ceiling, even though the AI would hear him either way. “JARVIS?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Pizza, if you would?”

“Certainly, sir. The usual order?”

“Please. And let the others know? I think it’s Clint’s turn to pick the movie.”

“Of course, Captain Rogers.”

Steve looks over at where James is watching him talk to the AI. 

“That’s so weird,” James says. Not that he never talks to JARVIS himself, but it’s mostly for security purposes and perimeter checks.

Steve shrugs.

\----

They all show up, or at least all of them who are on-planet and in the Tower: Sam and Natasha of course, followed shortly by Clint, whose arm is in a sling because it had been dislocated by the squid, Tony, who brings Pepper along with him. She leans down and kisses Steve’s cheek and says, “I’m glad you’re alright.” She greets James with a smile and doesn’t seem at all afraid of him like a lot of people, but then she could set him on fire with her brain if she tried so that’s probably a good reason. (Steve thinks maybe James likes her, but it’s hard to tell.)

Bruce shuffles in last, with a huge container of homemade cookies. He hadn’t gone on this mission for one reason and another, and he worries about his teammates. He bakes when he’s worried, because he finds meditating harder to do when he doesn’t know where they all are, and he can’t watch the news when he’s not on the mission. He says the Other Guy finds it soothing as well, so that’s good. 

Natasha settles on the floor against Steve’s shin, the leg that’s ok and not propped up on pillows on the coffee table, and Bucky curls up on the other end of the couch. Sam sits between them, perhaps a little closer to Bucky than to Steve, and the rest of them all look at that tableau for a moment and don’t say a word about it, settling themselves around the room. 

The pizza arrives, and Clint insists on Alien for the movie, because of course he does, but at least Bucky seems to enjoy it (Steve watches him closely out of the corner of his eye to make sure it’s not triggering anything, but then, aliens have only lately really become a problem so perhaps it wouldn’t). Natasha makes fun of Clint through most of the movie, mostly of his crush on Ripley, and Clint just grins at her and tells her that Ripley reminds him of her, but taller. She threatens to kill him in his sleep, and he blows her kisses. Their relationship is weird. Tony and Pepper chatter quietly amongst themselves on the loveseat, and Sam shares his popcorn with James. Bruce falls asleep about twenty minutes into the film, which makes Steve feel warm, knowing that Bruce feels safe enough with them to sleep.

Steve enjoys having his team around him, but he’s exhausted by the time the movie is over, and his leg aches, and his ribs and his shoulder and his everything. And at his end of the couch, Bucky is fidgeting like he’s a little overwhelmed and doesn’t know how to do anything about it. 

Sam does, though, as does Natasha, and they gently herd the rest of the Avengers out of Steve’s apartment, leaving it blessedly quiet.

Bucky helps him stand without a word, and Steve grabs his crutches and hobbles into his room. He slowly manages to get himself ready for bed, goddamn his leg anyway. 

He’s just trying to figure out how to prop up his leg and still manage to cover himself against the slight chill that always seems to be in the air here when Bucky shows up in his door, which he’d left cracked like usual. He’s been telling himself it’s so he can hear if anyone comes into the apartment, but really it’s to hear if Bucky goes on walkabout during the night, and they both know it.

Bucky has the comforter from his bed draped over his shoulders and a look on his face that says, ‘don’t fucking ask,’ so Steve doesn’t ask when he comes into the room, glaring at Steve all the way, and curls himself up on the floor next to Steve’s bed. 

Steve blinks at him for a full minute before Bucky speaks. “Let me know if you need anything,” he says, grumbles really, reluctant and grumpy about it like he can’t believe he’s actually doing this. 

“Okay,” Steve replies, bewildered. He gets his leg propping situation figured out and curls up in the bed, mostly comfortable. He shifts a little, then more, ending up on his stomach with at least half his leg still propped up, one arm draped off the side of the bed.

And he maybe hallucinates that Bucky laces their fingers together in the darkness. It’s probably the drugs they gave him, the ones that almost work. 

\----

Steve wakes up to the smell of bacon. 

James isn’t on the floor beside his bed anymore, presumably because he’s in the kitchen frying bacon. All trace of his presence is gone, except for the way Steve’s fingers still tingle from where he’d maybe slept with Bucky holding his hand. 

He hadn’t dreamed at all.

Steve gets himself out of bed and propped up on the crutches, takes care of his morning routine, only a little bit to put off facing James, and then he goes into the kitchen.

James is nodding his head along to some music only he can hear while he fries bacon and makes pancakes. He looks up at Steve as he comes hobbling into the room and collapses at the table.

“You still like pancakes, right?” 

“Yeah,” Steve replies, smiling. “Yeah, I do.” 

James asks him questions like that sometimes. Like he’s checking to see if something he thinks he remembers is actually true. Steve tries not to let it bug him, this little sign that Bucky doesn’t quite remember everything about who he was before HYDRA got their mitts on him. At least he’s actually asking, verifying, instead of just assuming that nothing he thinks is real is actually real, like he had at first, when they were still fighting through the programming to the tattered remnant of a man underneath.

He sits and watches as Bucky finishes making a huge batch of pancakes (they both eat quite a bit more than the average man of their age) and an entire pound of bacon. They’re both quiet, and it’s peaceful, listening to the sizzling and Bucky’s faint off-key humming. He sets the plates in the middle of the table, hands Steve a glass of orange juice, a plate, and utensils, and sits across from him.

For a while, things stay silent except for the sounds of fork and knife, of chewing and swallowing, the occasional sound of appreciation from Steve.

“You can call me Bucky,” Bucky says, out of the blue. He sets down his fork and knife, even though there’s still two pancakes on his plate.

Steve looks up at him, his mouth full. He chews and swallows, and then says, “What?”

He shrugs. “You can call me Bucky, if you still want to.”

“May I ask why?”

Another shrug. “I thought you were trying to make me him, the guy you remember.”

“I--”

“It’s just that you don’t see any difference, do you? Between me and him? Even though I’m not him, I barely even remember him--”

“You _are_ him, Buck.”

“I’m a different person.”

“So am I.” Steve shrugs, takes another mouthful of pancakes so he doesn’t have to speak for a minute. Because it’s true, he is not the same guy that grew up at Bucky Barnes’s side. He used to think he’d be an artist, and he was pretty sure he’d die before he was thirty, and now he’s a soldier, and sometimes a killer, and technically almost a hundred years old, all because he couldn’t not do the right thing.

Bucky sighs. “So I finally figured it out, that you’re not trying to make me him, because you think I already am him, even though I don’t really remember everything all the time and I murdered people a lot for a long time. So it’s okay, I guess.”

“That wasn’t you.” This feels like an argument they’ve had before, even though they really haven’t. They’ve never really talked about it at all.

“It was, though.” Bucky shrugs, that lopsided shrug of his.

“It wasn’t your choice. Did you want to do that? Kill all those people?”

“I didn’t want anything at all for a very long time, Steve.”

“So, it wasn’t your choice. I don’t care if you never remember everything. I’m just glad to have you back. I can remember for both of us if I need to. It’s fine.”

Bucky nods. They both go back to eating, having exhausted their emotional discussion for the day. And probably the week. Possibly the month.

But things are a little easier between them after that, the air a little clearer. Bucky almost smiles a little more often, and Steve feels like a weight has been lifted off his chest. Not all of it, but some of it, at least.

\----

Sam notices. He spends the most time with them, of everyone on the team.

“You two seem easier with each other lately,” he says, when he and Steve are cooling off after their run. 

Steve hands him a bottle of water and shrugs. “Yeah, I guess we are.”

Sam smiles, that brilliant smile of his, the one that made Steve think of him when everyone he knew was trying to kill him and Natasha. “That’s great, Steve. I’m really glad for you.”

And the thing is, Steve knows he means it.

\----

Bucky starts making breakfast more often. He doesn’t go with Steve and Sam on their morning runs, he’s usually still in bed (or at least in his room) when Steve leaves, but breakfast is almost always waiting when Steve returns.

Except after Bucky’s had a particularly bad night, and that’s how Steve knows to tread lightly.

Steve tries to take over dinner when he’s not on a mission, but Bucky is a much better cook than him. Or else breakfast is much easier to make than dinner. 

But at least he doesn’t boil everything.

\----

“I have therapy this afternoon,” Bucky says over breakfast.

Steve already knows this; Bucky has therapy twice a week. He doesn’t talk about it, and Steve doesn’t ask. He’s had his own share of therapy, and he still goes at least once a month because it does help him sort things out in his head, but it’s not the sort of thing he’s comfortable talking about, and he doesn’t think Bucky will be either.

So he doesn’t ask, and Bucky doesn’t offer information either.

“Yeah,” Steve says. Just an acknowledgement, because he doesn’t know where this is going.

“Are you doing anything today?”

Steve shrugs. “Not really. Thought I might go up to the roof and sketch the skyline for a while.”

Bucky nods. “So.” He pauses, looks down at his scrambled eggs and toast. “So, you’ll be here?”

It takes Steve a moment to realize what Bucky’s asking, and he looks away from the expression on Bucky’s face.

“Yeah, Buck, I’ll be around.”

“Good,” he replies. “Okay. Good.”

Steve smiles at him, gentle. “What time is your appointment?”

“Twelve thirty.”

“You doin’ an hour today?”

“I think so.”

“Okay.”

And that’s that.

Bucky is withdrawn when he returns to the apartment after his session with the doctor. Steve sees it immediately, but he doesn’t say anything. He says hi to Bucky and lets him wander into the apartment.

For a while, Bucky sits in the chair by the huge windows in the living room, staring out at the city. Steve brings him a glass of water, and leaves him be. He can be patient in this. 

After several hours, Bucky seems to snap himself out of whatever was keeping him so far away in his head. He looks around the room as he stretches himself from where he’d been curled in the chair and Steve feels it when Bucky’s eyes fall on him. He looks up from where he was sketching (Bucky) and smiles. 

“Hi,” Steve says.

“I’m starving,” Bucky replies. 

Steve smiles. 

Together, moving around each other much the way they used to when they were young and poor and living together, before the war and the cold and the long sleep and all the death, they make dinner. It’s simple, pasta and sauce and salad, and they take their bowls and their forks and spoons and sit together on the couch to eat. 

Bucky doesn’t offer any information about how his therapy session had gone, but whatever he’d talked about, whatever had happened, it seems to have settled within him, grounding him in the present in a way that Steve hasn’t seen on him in a long time.

They eat their dinner together, and watch a movie or two. Bucky lets Steve sit close next to him, and neither of them mention it when Steve’s hand ends up on his knee. Or when Bucky shifts to lean against Steve.

\----

“Steve, wake up.”

Steve is awake in an instant, pulled bodily out of the nightmare and into the darkness of his room in the Tower. 

“Bucky,” he says, and there is no confusion in his voice, no sleep. Steve always had woken quickly, but ever since the serum it’s even faster and more complete.

Bucky is crouched next to the bed, close, next to Steve’s head, and Steve can only make him out dimly in the darkness. 

Their breathing matches though, a little too fast, a little too heavy to be normal.

Bucky had been dreaming as well. 

“Are you alright?” Steve asks. He twitches a little, shifting in the bed.

He can’t quite see it, but he feels Bucky nod. 

“You?” Bucky returns.

“Nightmare,” Steve admits.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. An admission, of sorts. He starts to stand, and Steve reaches out without thought, wrapping his hand around Bucky’s wrist--the metal one. Bucky makes a noise, low in his throat. But it stops him leaving, at least momentarily. He looks down at Steve, at least Steve thinks he is. Steve lets go of his wrist, and Bucky waits.

“You don’t have to go,” Steve says. He doesn’t really want to get out of bed to go sit in the living room. He wants to pull the covers over his head and stay in the dark. Really, he just wants Bucky to stay with him for a little while. Until he remembers fully that he’s alive, that they both are.

“Stay?” he adds. “If you want to. You can stay. Here.”

There’s a tense moment while Steve waits for Bucky to decide. He hears Bucky’s gusty sigh, and relief floods him. A moment later, there’s the dip of the bed as Bucky clambers over him and stretches out beside him.

They lay side by side for a while, as each of them calms down from his individual nightmares, and they find their breath matching in depth and slowness. It’s good, having Bucky beside him in bed, even if he still feels so far away.

“I don’t really remember drowning,” Steve says, eventually. He doesn’t know why he’s admitting to this, but he is. His voice is soft and low, so as not to disturb the quiet of the night. “But I dream about it sometimes.” 

He doesn’t mention the other things he dreams about: ice and cold, and Bucky falling. Sometimes he dreams that he’d never gotten Bucky back at all, that he’d never found him in Azzano. 

He doesn’t expect Bucky to reply at all. Bucky doesn’t talk about the past much. Steve still isn’t sure how much he actually remembers.

“I don’t remember falling,” Bucky says, voice barely a murmur, more of a ghost than he’s been in a while. “But I dream about it sometimes.” 

Bucky doesn’t mention the other things he dreams about, the cold and the darkness and the way consciousness was slowly leached from him when they’d put him under, about the numbness of it. Sometimes he dreams that Steve just got sick and died shortly after he’d shipped out, and those are the worst dreams of all.

Steve turns on his side, away from Bucky, shoving his fist in his mouth to muffle the sob that wants to tear its way from his throat at that. Bucky doesn’t seem to blame him for the things that happened to him, but that doesn’t mean Steve doesn’t blame himself. It’s self-defense, turning away, even though he knows that Bucky can hear the way his breath hitches. Maybe Bucky even remembers the way he used to turn away, when he was upset. 

He expects Bucky to leave, or turn from him at least. Bucky doesn’t need to deal with Steve’s issues on top of his own, and he won’t put them on him.

What he vastly does not expect is for Bucky to turn on his side behind him and scoot closer, closing the distance between them on the bed, carefully draping his right arm over Steve’s waist.

And it’s not fair, he should be the one comforting Bucky right now, not the other way ‘round. But Steve is nothing if not weak when it comes to Bucky, and he lets it happen. Steve turns his face into his pillow, to muffle his watery laugh, to hide himself just that little bit more from Bucky, even though it’s dark in the room and neither of them can really see the other.

Bucky shifts, pressing them flush together, his chest against Steve’s back, the way they used to sleep pressed together when it was cold in their tiny, drafty apartment in Brooklyn (and then even when it wasn’t cold), tucking his knees in behind Steve’s, even though the fit isn’t quite right anymore now that their height difference is flipped. He breathes against Steve’s neck, humid and hot and _there_ , and Steve feels the barest touch of his nose against his scalp, and relaxes. 

Something that has been aching deep in his chest for what feels like every single moment of all of the time since Bucky had fallen from that train loosens, and Steve sighs as it fades away. He falls asleep like that, there in his bed with Bucky pressed against him, arm around him, feeling small and truly safe in a way that he hasn’t felt in a long, long time.

\----

He knows that it’s later than usual when he wakes up, from the way the sunlight slants across his room. Steve stays still, curled on his side with Bucky wrapped around him, as the night comes back to him.

The usual nightmares, and Bucky waking him up. Him asking Bucky to stay with him, and Bucky agreeing, which Steve really hadn’t expected. 

He can’t help feeling lighter this morning, though he knows that this one incident doesn’t change things. It’s not like they can snap their fingers and magically go back to the way things were, back when they were kids. Things will never be the same, but perhaps they can move forward after all. Perhaps they’re not doomed to a lifetime of circling one another warily, never quite breaking orbit. But Steve can’t help but feel selfish; like he wants to keep this moment of calm, of peace and comfort for as long as he can, draw it out. So he doesn’t move, and he doesn’t wake Bucky up.

He’s surprised Bucky is even still there, still asleep. He’s not sure he can remember a single night since Bucky followed him home after being released by SHIELD that Bucky had slept peacefully. Or slept for more than a few hours. Mostly because he hasn’t been sleeping more than a few hours at a time either.

Not that he’s been doing much better. And aren’t they a pair?

Bucky shifts against him and that’s--oh. Steve blinks. That’s not unusual though, it’s not like he’s never--

Bucky’s murmuring though, shifting closer to awake, shifting against Steve. 

The words aren’t in English, but they have the sort of tone that Steve associates with Bucky grumbling about five more minutes, about not being forced awake, and Steve stays still, keeps his breathing deep and even, and doesn’t do anything one way or the other.

And Bucky goes stiff against him all at once. Steve knows he’s awake. 

“Mornin’,” he mumbles.

Bucky starts to scoot back, away from him. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“Hey, no.” Steve flips over, quick, and Bucky stops moving. He looks… mortified. Like he’s afraid of how Steve’s going to react and just. No. He’s never going to push Bucky away, not ever. Steve tilts his head in and presses his forehead against Bucky’s, and doesn’t say anything when Bucky shuts his eyes, not quite up to looking Steve in the eye right now.

“Don’t apologize for that, of all things,” Steve says, smiling a little. “I feel like you probably haven’t spent a lot of time sleeping in close contact with another person. I’m, um, not in much better shape right now,” and his smile goes rueful, and Steve knows he’s blushing at this point. 

“It’s been a while since I slept with someone else in bed with me too,” he finishes.

Bucky takes a deep breath, and opens his eyes. He looks better, almost at peace, and Steve breathes a sigh of relief.

“I remember some of… that,” Bucky says, soft.

“Good. I wondered.”

“I’m sorry I’m not--”

Steve shushes him. He lifts his hand and lays it against Bucky’s cheek, because they’re allowed to touch now. Taking a risk, he reaches up and kisses Bucky’s forehead, and then the tip of his nose, simple affection. “I’ll be here when you’re ready, if you want me to be. I’ll be here even if you never are, or if you choose someone else. End of the line, right?”

Bucky huffs a laugh. “OK.” 

He hesitates, but he leans in across the pillow they’re now sharing, telegraphing his intent the whole way. Steve shuts his eyes and waits, not pushing, not backing away.

Bucky kisses him. A dry, chaste kiss pressed to Steve’s lips, over almost as soon as it starts.

Steve opens his eyes and smiles. Bucky almost smiles back, and rolls away onto his back. 

“How about I do breakfast this morning?” Steve asks, after a moment.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “Good.”

\----

“Can I ask you a question?” Steve ventures, as he plates hashbrowns. His aren’t nearly as good as Bucky’s (Bucky is much better with a knife, but Steve tries not to dwell on why), but they’re nice and crispy and golden and that’s really all that matters. He adds eggs and some of the apples he’d cut up, a banana, and hands the plate to Bucky.

Bucky shrugs. “You wanna know how much I remember, huh?”

Steve shrugs, sheepish, blushing a bit, and one side of Bucky’s mouth quirks up in a smirk that hits Steve dead in the center of his chest it’s so familiar.

“I remember that,” Bucky says, impish.

“Jerk,” Steve admonishes.

“Punk,” Bucky replies, still smirking, and Steve has to take his seat quickly, looking at his plate intently because that’s the first time Bucky has called him a punk since he came in from the cold. It’s the first time since probably 1944, and Steve blinks and blinks and blinks for a minute. 

Bucky lets him take a moment, quietly eating, watching him. Steve can feel his gaze.

Steve takes a deep breath, and looks up. “Only if you want to tell me.”

Bucky shrugs his right shoulder, and looks to his own food. After a few minutes of silent eating, he speaks.

“I think it’s mostly all there, in my head. Everything, all of it, even the stuff I wish I could get rid of--” Bucky stops, takes a deep breath, and eats a huge bite of eggs and hashbrowns. He takes his time chewing and swallowing. “--but I can’t really get at it most of the time. It’s all jumbled up or the wires are crossed or something. I dunno, the doctors say something different every time they scan my brain.”

Bucky shrugs. He takes another bite. “But things don’t really come to me without some specific trigger. Or by instinct, sometimes.”

Steve nods. That makes sense; it seems like sometimes the things he says to Bucky trigger memories. “Is it okay, that I do that sometimes?”

He doesn’t elaborate, but Bucky seems to get it. “Yeah, those are mostly good memories, Steve.”

“Okay. Good.” Steve smiles. “Can I ask another question?”

Bucky shrugs, but he doesn’t say no.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

Bucky shrugs again, looking down at his food as though he knows what Steve’s about to ask. And maybe, on some level, he does. Maybe he’s been waiting for this.

“Do you think you have any of the triggers they gave you left?” Steve says it in a rush, in a hurry to get the question out so he doesn’t have to turn it over in his head anymore.

Bucky shrugs again. “I don’t think so? Maybe. I dunno. They say I don’t, the doctors and the therapists. But,” Bucky looks up and smirks a bit again, deflecting, “I’ll apologize in advance if you say something funny one day and I kill you.”

Steve snorts, because that is Bucky all over. That’s both of them all over, actually, gallows humor until the end. It sure beats talking about the way they feel, anyway. 

“Gee, thanks.”

“We can haunt Stark’s kid together.”

Steve snorts again, louder, and they both dissolve into giggles for a single, sweet moment. Steve lets it lie that Bucky just told him he won’t go on without Steve again. He knows it’s not healthy, thinking that way, but who’s he to say anything when he’s basically decided the same thing, once he saw Bucky on that bridge in DC?

\----

Sam gives him a speculative look and says, “So you call him Bucky all the time now.” 

Steve feels like there’s supposed to be a question in there somewhere, but he’s not sure what it is, so he just says, “Yes.”

Sam glares at him. “Really? You gonna make me work for it, Steve?”

Steve grins at him. “I should, but no. We talked about it. He said it’s okay.”

“Oh?”

Steve looks away, at the sidewalk under his feet. “He said that he realized that I’m just happy to have him back, however he is. I’m not trying to make him the guy I grew up with, because I’m not really the guy he grew up with either. We’ve both been through some shit, yanno?”

Sam rolls his eyes. “You are a master of understatement, dude.”

Steve smiles.

\----

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes Bucky is called in. He’s never been called in on the same missions as Steve, and Steve can’t figure out if that’s (what’s left of) SHIELD doing something or another, or if they just don’t think he’s Avengers material.

Bucky is absolutely Avengers material, even if he doesn’t think so himself. If he ever decides he wants to join, Steve will stop at literally nothing to make sure it happens.

The second time he’s given a mission, it’s Natasha who shows up for him. 

They’d had what felt to Steve like a reprieve, a space in which to breathe, in which they can get used to being around each other. It’d been nearly two months since the thing with the squid, and even longer since Bucky had been given an assignment. It had been quiet in the Tower, as most of the rest of the team other than Tony and Bruce wandered in and out. Clint had his own assignments, as did Natasha. Thor was on- and off-world, what with his duties as a prince and all. 

It had been quiet, and peaceful. Steve had felt like they were living in their own little world, circling each other, closer and closer as they grew more comfortable around each other again, more at ease. 

Bucky talks more now, most days. Sometimes they go for walks, just enjoying the city and each other’s company. Steve still can’t quite tell how Bucky feels a lot of the time, but overall he’s gotten the sense that Bucky is more at ease, both with Steve and in his own skin, than he has been since before the war. Bucky seems a little more comfortable in himself, a little less like he doesn’t understand why he’s still alive.

Steve feels like he can breathe a little easier, with that.

He is in the living room, reading a book on his tablet (he likes that he can keep an entire library in the gadget, and he’s trying to do just that, what with all that money he still can’t quite believe he has), when the sound of someone knocking on the door reaches him. He looks up, but Bucky comes out of the kitchen before he can get up, waving at him to stay on the couch. 

Steve watches him walk away down the hall, and something twists in his gut. Bucky’s been on edge all morning, and he’s dressed very differently from usual. Something is going on. 

Bucky’s wearing jeans, slung low on his hips and looking nearly painted on. He’s got on a worn-in henley that Steve’s never seen before, and a slouchy cardigan. His hair is pulled back in a messy bun, and he’s wearing glasses. Steve’s never seen any of the clothes before, and certainly not the glasses (he likes the glasses). (He likes the whole outfit, actually.)

Natasha is at the door, and Steve’s stomach stinks. 

She follows Bucky back into the living room, and smiles at Steve.

“Natasha,” he greets her. “How are you?”

“Good,” she replies. “You?”

“Okay.” Steve raises his eyebrow at her.

She shrugs. “I need the backup. Clint’s busy. I’ll watch out for him, promise.”

Bucky, who’d left again, comes back carrying a worn backpack. Natasha looks at him and makes a gesture with her hand indicating he should spin around. Smirking, Bucky complies. 

He asks her a question in Russian, something Steve guesses probably means something along the lines of _how’d I do?_

Natasha shrugs, replies in kind, and Steve decides to spend more time working on his Russian. He’s generally pretty good with languages; he’s been letting it slide lately.

“See ya around, Rogers,” Natasha says to him a few minutes later, when the conversation in Russian is finished. 

“Stay safe,” Steve says. He smiles, like it doesn’t physically pain him that Bucky is leaving. “Call if you need me.”

They both smile at him, just a little. Steve wants to cross the room and wrap Bucky in his arms, keep him safe and whole and with him, but he doesn’t. He just returns their smiles with one of his own, and tries to keep his body relaxed on the couch. He looks down at his tablet, not seeing the words on the display anymore, waiting for them to go.

He jolts when Bucky flops down next to him. Surprised, Steve looks up. Natasha is nowhere to be seen, and Bucky is sitting practically in his lap. 

“It should only be a day or two,” Bucky says, softly. He looking at Steve with something soft in his eyes, something Steve hasn’t seen in close to a century. 

“I know.”

“I’ll check in, all right?”

“That’d be nice, thanks. Do you need my number?”

Bucky smirks at him. “Like I don’t already have it, Rogers. Please.”

Steve smiles a little and dips his head, blushing. Bucky leans in and presses their foreheads together. “You’ll be here, when I get back?”

“Of course, Buck. I mean, unless I get called in, but you’ll hear about it if I do, from Natasha at least.”

“Okay.” Bucky takes a deep breath. “I gotta run.” But he stays there next to Steve for another moment, before he shifts and presses a quick kiss to Steve’s cheek, and then gets up and goes.

\----

Sam comes over and camps out on the couch next to Steve that afternoon after Bucky’s departure. He brings beer, and they order pizza and Steve patently does not talk about it at all, not even a little bit.

\----

Steve’s phone chimes early the next morning, not from a contact, just a phone number.

_Am fine. Stop worrying._

Steve chuckles and saves the number carefully in his phone as ‘Bucky’s an asshole’. Hopefully at some point he’ll see it. Hopefully he’ll appreciate it. He takes a moment and then responds.

_Good. Stay safe._

There’s no response, but Steve wasn’t really expecting one. He gets out of bed and puts on his running gear. Sam had to go back to DC for a few days, so it’s fine that it’s earlier than usual, it’s fine for him to get his run started at four thirty in the morning instead of at six. 

The day passes quietly, and quickly for all that Steve is constantly noticing Bucky’s absence. 

\----

Another text comes through late the next morning, when Steve is punching things in the gym downstairs. He doesn’t get it until after his shower.

_Sorry if I woke you up yesterday. Time zones suck._

Apparently Natasha is teaching Bucky current slang. Or perhaps Clint is, somehow. Clint seems to rub off on people, and in the limited time they’ve spent together, he and Bucky seem to get along disturbingly well. 

_It’s okay,_ Steve sends back. _Everything going all right?_

_So far so good_

Steve wonders if that’s as much bravado as it sounds like. 

A moment later another text follows. _Enjoying having the place to yourself?_

_No._

Steve stares at his phone. Before he can change his mind, he adds, _I miss you._

_Eh._

Steve can practically hear the smirk through the phone.

_Jerk._

Another minute, while Steve stares at his phone, and Bucky replies. _Miss you too punk. gtg_

It takes him a moment to parse what ‘gtg’ means, but once he figures it out, he sighs and puts his phone away.

\----

Bucky and Natasha are gone for nearly two weeks. 

Steve is ready to pull his hair out by the end of it, sick with worry. 

He hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep since Bucky left, and Bucky hasn’t checked in with him in almost a whole week. He’s only had sporadic texts from various numbers that mean Natasha is going through burner phones like water, and that’s never a good sign.

It’s Natasha who lets him know that they’re back in the States, back in the Tower, in debrief. It’s Natasha who sends him the text, _be careful_ , once they’re finished.

\----

Steve is sitting on the couch twisting his hands in his lap under the guise of sketching when he hears the door open.

He’s up and over the back of the couch in seconds, looking down the hall at Bucky.

Bucky, who is dressed in the exact same clothes he’d left in, but looks like a shadow of himself. A shadow of the shadow he’d been when he’d first followed Steve home. He’s standing just inside the door, shoulders slumped, head hanging, hair a mess. 

“Buck?”

He looks up, down the hall at Steve, and Steve has to force himself not to react, because Bucky looks. Haunted. Hunted. 

Broken.

Bucky drops his gaze. He shuts the door, and shuffles down the hall, into his room. Steve hears the door shut, and then he hears the lock, and he shuts his eyes against the pain in his chest, the way his stomach sinks into the floor.

Steve goes back to the couch and sits down, grabs his phone.

_What the fuck happened, Natasha?_

_I can’t actually tell you, Steve, I’m sorry. Just be careful of him. Let me know if you need backup._

And what the fuck had happened that Steve would need backup against his best friend? 

“Fuck,” he mutters, tossing the phone down on the coffee table.

\----

Steve stands outside Bucky’s room, straining to hear any noise from within, but there’s nothing. Not even the sound of Bucky breathing, which, all right, the insulation in the building is good enough to hide that, at least. 

“Bucky?” he calls, hopeful.

There’s no answer. 

“Bucky, I’m not--” he starts, but he has no idea how to finish that statement. It takes him a minute, and then he starts again. “I’m not going to make you come out or anything. And I’m not going to come in. Only, I made you a sandwich. And I’ve got some water. I’m going to leave them out here for you.”

Steve sets them down. “And I’m going to bed now, if you need me. I won’t.” Steve takes a deep breath. “I’m not going to stay out here and wait for you, if you’re worried about that. I’m going down the hall. I’ll be there. If you need anything.”

Steve goes down the hall and into his room. He shuts the door and leans against it, sinks down to sit on the floor. He puts his head in his hands and for a long time he just concentrates on breathing, on breathing steady and deep until the urge to dissolve finally passes. 

Later, he’s not sure really how much later, he hears the door down the hallway click open, and then shut again. 

Steve climbs to his feet, sheds his clothes, leaving them where they lay instead of folding them neatly like he usually does, and crawls into bed.

He doesn’t sleep.

\----

Bucky doesn’t leave his room for three days. 

Steve doesn’t leave the apartment for three days. He makes Bucky sandwiches, and leaves him those and fruit and water at regular intervals. 

One afternoon, he goes to Bucky’s door, and tells him he’s going to sit outside it for a while, and he sits down with his back against the door and he sketches. He lets his mind wander and lets it all pour out of his hand, and when he looks down, there’s a drawing of the way Bucky had looked when he came home. 

Under it, Steve draws a little frowny face, and then writes ‘I wish I could hug you’ on it, and slips it under the door. Then he gets up and goes back to the living room. 

\----

The next day he makes brownies. They come out gooey and just cooked enough, and he leaves a few on a plate with a glass of milk outside Bucky’s door when they’re cool enough to take out of the pan.

“They’re still warm, Buck,” he says. “So don’t dawdle. I’ll be in the living room.”

He listens for the sound of the door opening and shutting, and he slumps into the couch.

\----

“Stevie?”

Steve turns over from where he’d very much been not sleeping. The way Bucky sounds, small and scared, makes him want to hit something. It’s the first time he’s called Steve that since before, and Steve only wishes it were under better circumstances.

“Yeah?”

Bucky is standing in his doorway, arms crossed over his chest. His hair’s a mess, greasy and lank around his head, and he’s got three days of stubble on his face, and his eyes are no less haunted than they were when he’d returned home, although he has less of that hunted look about him.

He looks like hell.

Bucky opens his mouth like he wants to say something, and nothing comes out. 

Steve throws aside the covers and makes a ‘come here’ gesture, and Bucky crosses the room and crawls up the bed to Steve’s side. Steve holds open his arms, and Bucky burrows into him, pressing his face into Steve’s neck and wrapping himself around Steve’s body as best he can. Steve shifts and puts his arms around Bucky, holding him close. 

“You can talk about it, if you wanna,” he murmurs against Bucky’s greasy, dirty hair. 

Bucky shakes his head. Steve can feel his breath puffing against his neck, and he tightens his hold on him.

“Okay,” he says. “I’m here, Buck. And you’re here. We’re in the Tower, and we’re safe now.”

Bucky nods a little. He breathes against Steve’s neck, and he doesn’t speak anymore, and eventually he goes lax as he falls asleep, and only then does Steve let himself drift off.

\----

“I had to make sure,” Bucky says into Steve’s neck, late the next morning when they’re both awake. 

Both of them had slept, and slept well, for far longer than usual, and neither of them is eager to let go, get up, start the day.

“Hmm?” Steve replies. His hand drifts up and down Bucky’s back, up and down, up and down. He doesn’t know if Bucky finds it soothing, but he sure does. And Bucky’s not protesting, so there’s that as well.

“He’s always there,” Bucky turns his head so he doesn’t have to speak louder to be heard. “I’m… learning. To be okay with that. To use what he can do without becoming him.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “That’s good, right?”

Bucky shrugs. “But I’m not cleared for long missions for a really good reason, yanno?”

Steve nods. He’d been so worried about that, about the mission going long, and then it had, and all his worries had apparently come true.

“He was needed a lot, and he does good work, and I felt like I was drowning. I was sinking under him,” Bucky chokes out. 

Steve holds him tight, and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say.

“I had to be sure,” Bucky keeps going, pushing the words past his lips. He needs to get it all out before he can’t talk anymore. “His last mission was to kill you. I had to make sure I could disobey, that we were in agreement about that, before I could be around you.”

“Oh, Buck,” Steve breathes. He tightens his arms around Bucky until he makes an oof noise, and only then does he loosen his grip. “I’m sorry you had to deal with all that.”

Bucky takes a deep, shaky breath. “I like to be useful. That part was nice. Watching Natasha’s back was nice, although I’m not sure she trusts me. But I can’t be your kept man forever, Steve. Eventually you’re gonna need me to be your self-preservation instincts again, because God knows you’ve got none of your own. Still.”

“In your time,” Steve says. But he’s not sure they’re going to allow that, and Bucky isn’t sure either. 

“I’m not sure they’re gonna let me wait til I’m ready.”

“I’ll make them,” Steve growls. Bucky thinks perhaps he likes this possessiveness in Steve. It feels nice, soothing like his arms around him, strong and safe. 

“Steve. Don’t.”

And for once, Steve lets it go. Or at least he doesn’t say anything more about it.

“Breakfast?” he says, and Bucky’s stomach growls in response. 

\----

Steve says, “I’m going to bed, I think,” around midnight, and Bucky looks up from the book he’s reading. 

He seems to prefer the solid version with pages and a cover to the tablet Stark had provided for him. Steve doesn’t push him to change; he still likes physical books as well even though he has so many on his own tablet. 

“Okay.”

Steve hesitates for a minute, then speaks again. “You can--”

Bucky watches him, doesn’t make him struggle through the rest of that sentence. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Steve says. He’s blushing, he knows he is, but he doesn’t hide it. He just smiles at Bucky, and then heads down the hall. 

Steve goes through his nightly ritual, brushing his teeth, washing his face, changing into pajamas. He gets into bed, staying on what he’s come to think of as his side, pulls the covers up to his chin, and shuts his eyes. 

He listens to the usual sounds of the apartment at night. The quiets sound of the air cycling on and off, and the muffled sounds that reach them from the city, even a million stories up in the air like they are. 

After a few minutes, he hears the telltale sounds of Bucky shuffling down the hallway. Steve continues to listen, as Bucky goes into his room for a few minutes, and then into the bathroom for a few more minutes. There’s the sounds of water running and the toilet being flushed, and then Bucky shuffles into Steve’s room, yawning and scratching the back of his head with his metal hand. 

Bucky curls up next to him, resting his forehead on Steve’s shoulder, and murmurs, “G’night, Steve.”

“Good night,” Steve murmurs back. He takes a deep breath and relaxes.

\----

But the reprieve, it seems, is over. 

Steve is yanked out of bed at all hours of the night multiple times over the next few weeks. First, it’s for robots, and then for some self-styled wizard of some sort.

Steve tells Bucky about the rant that had sent Tony on later, about magic and ridiculousness and some guy called Stephen Strange. Natasha, according to Steve, had pointed out that one of his team members was an _alien god_ , but Tony was already started, and there’s seldom any stopping Tony once he’s on a rant, and neither Pepper nor Rhodey had been available in the midst of battle to shut him up. Steve does impressions as he describes the rant, and Bucky rolls around on the couch laughing.

Bucky’s there when Steve gets the call about the octopus.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says into his phone, all traces of sleep gone from his face, from his eyes. “Did you just say there’s a cephalopod in DUMBO?”

Bucky lifts his head from Steve’s shoulders, and his brows are somewhere near his hairline. Steve pats him and starts getting out of bed, barking orders into the phone and going for his uniform.

“Your life is weird,” Bucky calls after him.

Steve halts, turns and dashes over to where Bucky is still in his bed, leans down and presses a kiss to his lips, quick and firm, and then runs out again.

He has to spend most of the trip to where there’s an actual octopus under the Manhattan Bridge telling himself it’s okay that he’d given Bucky a farewell kiss like. Like Bucky’s _his_ or something. But then there’s that octopus, and Steve has to put it out of his mind.

\----

Bucky spends most nights in Steve’s bed now, usually curled up around Steve, the way they used to curl up together when they were young, and when they were older and sharing an apartment. It makes Steve feel safe, and it makes him feel like he used to when he was small and always cold and usually sick, and Bucky’s breath gusting against his neck in the night was the only comfort and safety he really knew.

Neither of them says anything about their sleeping arrangements. Steve doesn’t comment that Bucky seems almost normal, these days. Or, at least, a new normal. Normal for this new, older Bucky who’s been through so much, who has had some much done to him, who has too many memories crowding his head that hit him at random times, for random reasons.

Bucky isn’t as quick to smile as he was when he was young; but then, neither is Steve. They save most of their smiles for each other, secret and small, open and loud alike. 

Sometimes it’s Steve who curls around Bucky, when Bucky’s had a bad day, or the nightmares have been particularly bad for him.

Bucky’s sense of humor is a little different than Steve remembers it being, but he still makes Steve laugh harder than anyone else ever has, and that’s good. Steve’s sense of humor has changed as well.

It’s okay. They’re okay. Despite the differences between who they are and who they were, they still fit together like puzzle pieces.

\----

Steve drags himself back into their apartment just after midnight. He’s been gone for nearly seventy two hours, with one thing and another, and then the huge debriefing that none of them had been able to get out of and almost all of them had dozed off during, at one point or another. 

All he’d wanted through the whole thing was to see Bucky, to feel that bit of peace that always settles in his chest when he’s at home, with Bucky. 

He’d stopped downstairs to shower, not wanting to track blood and guts and mud into his apartment. He hadn’t wanted Bucky to have to deal with all that. So he’s in sock feet, wearing soft sweatpants and a t-shirt, carrying the shield in one hand and with the uniform draped over his shoulder.

He doesn’t call out when he enters the apartment. Bucky might not be asleep, but either way, he’ll know it’s Steve. Not just because of how limited access is to the Tower, but also because he knows Steve’s steps.

He’d confessed that once in the middle of the night when neither of them was asleep. It’s okay, because Steve recognizes Bucky’s steps as well, when Bucky actually makes enough noise in his movements that Steve can hear him. Mostly if he notices Bucky coming up to him, it’s because of the way the air shifts its movements around his body, not because of any sound. 

Bucky is incredibly quiet. Steve doesn’t like to think about how handy that must have been, or how long it had taken to train him into such silence.

Steve stops in the kitchen and grabs a glass of water. 

There’s nothing he wants more right now than to crawl into bed with Bucky, wrap himself up in his scent and his breath, and shut the world out for a while. But he can’t. He won’t disturb Bucky for his own pathetic need to be held, because it’s the middle of the night and Bucky deserves all the rest he can manage to get.

Or maybe he will, because Bucky is in his bed when he opens his door.

Oh. Well, then.

Bucky stretches and mumbles something that might be a hello. He’s on Steve’s side of the bed. Steve’s not entirely sure, and he’s not going to look any closer, but he might be wearing Steve’s clothes. He’s definitely using Steve’s pillow.

Steve stands there in the doorway, staring dumbly.

Bucky smirks at him. “C’mon, you must be exhausted.”

That jerks Steve into motion. He crosses the room and sits down on the side of the bed.

Bucky wrinkles his nose and nudges him in the hip with a knee. “You smell like garbage, Stevie.”

Steve had thought he’d gotten the smell out of his pores. He can’t quite tell on himself though, so Bucky’s probably right.

“Sorry,” he murmurs back. He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind Bucky’s ear, and doesn’t get up. His fingertips end up on Bucky’s cheek, and he doesn’t get up, doesn’t go to the bathroom, doesn’t move his hand. “Did you watch any of it on the news?”

There had been several news crews there, as well as a couple of the news helicopters, and how they’d managed to stay out of the way Steve still hasn’t figured out. But then, it is New York. They’ve had a lot of practice over the past few years. And especially over the past few months. 

(Thankfully, the octopus hadn’t actually destroyed that one chopper that one time, just chucked it into the river. The pilot and reporter had managed to bail out before it got too close to them, ending up in the river as well.)

Bucky nods and grimaces. “I had to stop. It was-- too much.”

Steve nods, because he was there. It was too much for him to bear, and he hadn’t had a choice. It had given him flashbacks, so he can’t imagine what it would’ve been like for Bucky, watching it happen live on tv, helpless to do anything about it.

“Stark’s kid patched me into the comms,” Bucky adds.

“Oh,” Steve replies, smiling. “Is that why he kept checking in on me?”

Steve tries to keep the comms for communication only when they’re in the middle of battle. It’s not right to distract your colleagues with banter, which Tony _really_ enjoys. But Steve hadn’t been able to get him to shut up, and every other sentence out of Tony’s mouth had been checking in on Steve, on all of them. 

Bucky shrugs, but he’s blushing.

He also hasn’t moved out of Steve’s spot. Or shifted under Steve’s fingers.

“You could’ve said something,” Steve points out. 

“I didn’t want to distract you,” Bucky replies. 

“Okay.” And for a minute, he just sits there, staring down at Bucky in his bed, thinking about how much he really likes it that Bucky had decided to sleep in his bed even when he wasn’t there. It makes him feel warm. It makes him feel possessive, like Bucky is _his_ for real.

“Go shower,” Bucky says after a few minutes. Steve can’t tell if he’s bothered by how Steve’s been staring at him. “You smell gross.” 

“I already showered once,” Steve protests. “Downstairs.”

“Yeah well, go do it again. Because you smell gross.” But Bucky softens the words by shifting under Steve’s hands, brushing his lips across Steve’s palm.

Both of them shiver. 

Steve does get up and go shower for a second time. After a few more minutes of staring. 

When he returns, Bucky has moved from his spot, though not so far as to be actually on the other side of the bed. Steve slips into bed and into Bucky’s space and into Bucky’s open arms and tucks his head under Bucky’s chin, breathing in the warm scent of him, burrowing as close as he can.

Bucky closes his arms around Steve, mumbling against the top of his head, and they both sleep.

\----

Steve wakes up slowly, softly. He is warm and comfortable. The dim sunlight filtering into the room tells him it’s still early. Early enough that he doesn’t need to be awake. But the way Bucky’s lips are pressed into his skin over his pulse, the way Bucky is draped over him, leaving nothing to the imagination, makes Steve wish he was still asleep, asleep and dreaming and in a place where he could take advantage, where he could move with Bucky, against him. 

Makes him wish Bucky wasn’t so warm and hard against him, so tempting.

Bucky, who is shifting against him, like he’s trying to get even closer, even in his sleep, and Steve lets himself enjoy it for a minute, enjoy the way Bucky is pressed flush against him, head to foot, their legs tangled together and _Jesus, this can’t continue._

Bucky huffs against his neck, drawing a shiver out of him. “For the love of all things holy, Stevie, are you awake yet or not?”

Oh. _Oh_.

“Yeah, oh.” 

Apparently he’d said that out loud.

“Buck, are you--”

“You’re an idiot, Steve; anyone ever tell you that?”

Steve laughs, running his hands down Bucky’s back, to where his shirt is riding up and the skin at his waist is exposed. Bucky chuckles against his neck, absolutely writhes against him, and Steve can’t help the moan that escapes his lips.

Well. That’s all right, then. Entirely all right.

\----

But there is no peace, no more reprieve from the outside world, and they don’t get much time to simply be together, now that together means more than occupying the same apartment and the occasional cuddle on the couch.

They don’t get much time, but they try to make the most of what they do get. Both of them feel like being in the future together is enough of a reprieve as it is.

Not that they really talk about it. Bucky still isn’t quite as vocal as he used to be, and Steve is used to that now. Steve still hasn’t quite found the words to tell Bucky how he feels, about Bucky, about them, about everything. He hopes that Bucky knows. He thinks that Bucky knows. And he thinks he knows how Bucky feels about him, and it’s not just thankful that Steve was there to take him in.

\----

“Steve, wake up.”

Steve wakes up. He opens his eyes, and there’s a gun two inches over his nose. He follows the arm holding it up to the body it’s attached to and sees Natasha, looking grim in the dim light. He turns his head, and the muzzle of the gun is pressed between Bucky’s eyes. 

Steve very carefully does not move. But he doesn’t stop the way his face twists into a frown, or the way his voice comes out strained and angry.

“What the _fuck_ , Natasha?”

Her eyes flicker down to him, assessing, but then go right back to Bucky. 

“You weren’t answering your phone, Steve,” she says, as if that explains why she’d broken into their apartment and has Bucky at gunpoint. Maybe that does explain it, in her mind. “You always answer your phone.”

Steve thinks for a minute, unsure where he’d left his phone, but Bucky’s the one who provides an answer. Bucky’s the one who had distracted him from bringing it to bed in the first place.

“It’s in the living room.”

“Bucky--”

“You needed a break, Steve.” 

Steve feels like there’s something of an apology in those words, something in his tone, but more of an apology for not telling him than for actually doing it. Bucky had wanted him to have a night of peace, no calls to assemble or anything like that. Those have been few and far between lately, and they’re both tired.

“We were worried,” Natasha adds. “I was elected as most likely to be able to incapacitate the Soldier if he was killing you.”

Steve looks between them. If it weren’t for the gun, he’d be throwing his hands up in frustration because _seriously_. Natasha is in his room, and she is pointing a gun at his--his Bucky, and neither of them seems to see an issue with that. 

Bucky is smirking, in fact, completely relaxed where he’s pressed against Steve, apparently completely unconcerned with the gun pointed as his head. He gives her an assessing look, and then shrugs a little, conceding the point. “Good choice.”

She smirks back at him. “Thanks.”

“Well, he’s not killing me!” Steve interjects, because that should be obvious. And why is the gun still pointed at Bucky’s head? “Can you put the gun down?”

“Oh.” Natasha blinks, and then clicks on the safety and lowers the weapon. 

“What the hell?” Steve repeats.

Natasha has the good grace to frown a little at that, but then she shrugs. “We’ve got a situation, Cap. Time to go.”

She throws another smirk at Bucky, “Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep.”

Bucky laughs.

Steve turns over and presses a quick kiss to Bucky’s still smiling lips, and then he’s up and following Natasha out of the room. “Don’t think we aren’t going to talk about this later, Natasha. What’s the situation?”

\----

Later, on the jet, Natasha sits down next to him. The battle is over, and they were victorious. Mostly. She has a limp from where she’d twisted an ankle in a bad landing, and Steve is holding a wad of gauze against his still sluggishly bleeding shoulder. He’s been texting Bucky to reassure him that he’s on his way home and in one piece. Hopefully he’ll have stopped bleeding by the time they get back to the Tower, because he doesn’t want to see the look that Bucky will get if he sees Steve injured.

Everyone else is in similar shape. Even Tony is quiet now, out of the suit and dozing on the couch. 

Steve glares at her, but she just looks back at him steadily.

“So,” she starts, crossing her arms and her legs and just looking at him. “Should that be something I expect to see, in the future?”

Steve keeps glaring at her, but he sighs. “Yes.” 

“You two share a bed regularly?”

“Yes.”

“This thing… ongoing?”

Steve lets his face settle. It’s too difficult to keep glaring when all he wants to do is curl up and sleep for about three days. 

“Pretty much indefinitely, Natasha.”

For a long, drawn out moment she just looks at him, and then she nods. “Then maybe you should start bringing him to movie night more often, huh?’

Steve blinks, but before he has a chance to answer, she’s gotten up and gone over to curl up against Clint’s side.

“Okay,” he mumbles to himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Since my blog is essentially a Captain America blog these days, feel free to [follow me](belovedmuerto.tumblr.com).


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